Do you have knowledge of a topic other people would like to learn about? Have you ever thought about creating an online course about the topic? In this text, we will let you know how you can create a successful online course business and how Vuolearning can support you along the way.
Whether you're a professional in digital marketing, employer branding, recruitment, or B2B sales, there are always others who would also like to become experts in the field and would be willing to pay for it.
Selling online courses is a cost-effective and scalable business that allows you to turn your skills into a revenue stream, and most importantly, to share your knowledge with others. The popularity of online courses has been growing lately, and today, more and more consumer and business clients are looking to develop their skills in a wide range of subjects online.
In this blog post, we'll go through steps that will help you succeed in building great online training courses on the Vuolearning platform and selling them to your target audiences.
Focus on building high-quality course content
The first step to succeeding in selling online courses is to create quality content. Quality content is the key to ensuring that the course accomplishes its learning objectives and that participants get what they are promised. Satisfied customers will spread the word and return as your customers in the future.
The definition of quality content is different for each course, but a relatively solid guideline is that quality content is meticulous, clear, and versatile. Often, high-quality courses are made of versatile content: they contain text, images, videos, exercises, and other types of content. Check out our blog for more tips on how to produce great course content!
Vuolearning allows you to create content in an effortless and efficient way, using existing materials as a basis for the content. By doing this, you can get the material you've already written and filmed on the platform in the blink of an eye. This way, you don't have to start from scratch if you have previously prepared some material.
Producing quality course content takes some time and effort, but you can think of it as an investment in the future. In the long run, quality online courses will save you time and resources by allowing you to train an unlimited number of participants with a single course.
Tips for marketing online courses
We recommend that you start marketing your online courses before launching the online shop where you sell them. You can utilize for example social media and paid advertising to share information about the courses and the launch schedule of your online store.
It is essential to remember that the participant is not just buying the course, but the change that comes with it.
Reflect on the differences in the images created by the following sentences:
This course is about customer service.
In this course, you will learn how to write emails that guarantee customer satisfaction in every situation!
Instead of just telling about content, it is more appealing to let the customers know, what kind of results can be expected at the end of the course. While of course, you need to be realistic about the promises you make and make sure that the course can deliver on them.
Like in all marketing, it is important to find your target audience and try to see things from their perspective when marketing an online course.
What kind of things does the target group want to learn? Why should the customer choose your course? Try to think about the questions that the person considering buying the course might have, and build your course description around them.
Many online coaches offer a short, free version of the course material or another opportunity to have a preview of the material before deciding to buy it. For some trainers, this is a good way of getting potential customers to make the final purchase decision.
When marketing is started before the course is released, you can ask interested users to join a newsletter list and receive a message when the course is available for purchase. The newsletter list can also be utilized at a later stage, for example for marketing the launch of future courses.
Building and launching an online store
As a Vuolearning user, you can automate the payment transactions for selling and buying online courses and the delivery of courses with an integration to the online store. When a customer makes a purchase in the store, they will automatically be sent the credentials to log in to the right course, without you having to manage the process manually.
Vuolearning can be integrated into several different online stores, for example, Shopify, WooCommerce, and MyCashflow. Shopify is the most common choice for our customers, it has a Finnish interface option and a wide range of payment methods. In addition to the integration, we also offer other online store-related services, such as branding to match your brand identity, assistance with the set-up, and implementation training.
A well-built, user-friendly, and polished online store finalizes the customer's purchase decision and is an important part of creating a professional image.
What kinds of things should be taken into consideration when building an online shop?
The look and feel of your online store matter. A clear, user-friendly, and stylish online store attracts attention, interest, and trust. Most service providers allow you to make changes to the look and feel of the online store. For example, Shopify, which was mentioned earlier, offers several different themes, including free ones, which can be customized to create the look and feel you want to achieve.
When designing your online store's interface, it is useful to explore a wide range of other online stores and consider which of their features could work in yours.
High-quality, clear images work for the best interest of your online shop. Product images should be consistent in scale so that they sit nicely in the product gallery. Images from free image banks such as Unsplash can also be used as product images.
The front page of an online shop is like the display window of a store. Therefore you should try to make the front page as clear and inviting as possible so that the visitors can easily see, what kind of an online store it is. On the front page, you can make a collection of eye-catching products you want to draw attention to, such as new or popular courses. The navigation bar should be used to categorize the courses by for example topic or difficulty level.
The product page of each product should include a high-quality image and a detailed description of the product. The product description of an online course should answer at least the following questions:
- Who is the online course made for?
- What kind of results can be expected by going through the course?
- Why should the customer buy the course from you and not someone else?
Utilize course feedback and analytics in sales and development
Once the online course store has been successfully launched and all aspects have been carefully planned, the basic operations will ideally run themselves without barely any effort. However, in order to maintain the quality of the courses and the number of sales, it is useful to take some steps to ensure that the courses continue to develop and sales are guaranteed in the future.
Vuolearning's feedback and analytics tools provide excellent support for sales and course development.
At the end of each course, use the Vuolearning survey tool to add a short feedback questionnaire asking your participants about their course experience. Quality feedback is an excellent sales and marketing tool: it provides useful information about the experience of taking your course and why the participants would recommend it to others. There is no better marketing than course participants who have had a successful experience and great results from the course and would recommend it to others. The feedback can be utilized on the homepage of your online shop or product pages.
Course feedback will also help you develop the course further when you get feedback from the participants on the content, the functionalities, and the results it produces.
The analytics tools of Vuolearning provide the trainer information on the direction in which the course should be developed and what the course participants have learned. If, for example, one of the final assignments in the course consistently produces poor results, this probably indicates that the subject could be taught more clearly in the course. Analysis and feedback may also reveal potential topics for new online courses.
Interested? Let us support you with starting your online course business. Book an appointment with one of our experts here.